OSHA Unveils Hazard Rule

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, in what it called one of the most important regulatory initiatives it has ever undertaken, will ask employers to institute a broad program to identify and prevent workplace hazards.

Some trucking officials said they were concerned the proposal amounts to a back-door route to enforcement of controversial standards such as ergonomics and motor vehicle safety that the industry has long fought OSHA on.

OSHA’s five-point workplace safety and health program, which it says will substantially reduce injuries and illnesses, is the centerpiece of its regulatory agenda for the coming year. The agency said it will formally propose the rule in April.

Repeated attempts to reach OSHA officials to discuss the program were unsuccessful.

According to Stuart Flatow, ATA’s director of occupational safety, OSHA’s safety and health program proposal has a lot of surface appeal, but how the agency puts it into place could turn into a nightmare for trucking.

“Unfortunately, OSHA’s draft rule provides for mountains of paperwork, second-guessing and micro-managing an employers’ existing program, punitive enforcement,” he said. “Worst of all, it circumvents legal rulemaking and legislative procedures to enforce such alleged hazards as ergonomics, that the agency has thus failed to obtain by the formal rulemaking process.”

For the full story, see the Dec. 7 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.